A Portal to Leya (18 page)

Susanne
So
glad you are at the beach, Lance! I remember the time I came to visit you with Leya.
We had so much fun. I found a whole cup of sea glass and Leya tried to steal my
blue ones. How is Francis? He is such a cutie. Tell him I said hi! You can give
him my contact info if he wants. I’d love to stay in touch. I’m sure he doesn’t
hate you.

Anonymous
Your
brother loves you, Lance

@susanne—yes,
I remember that day like it was yesterday. I think Leya did end up keeping your
blue sea glass. It was weird how you found SO many blue! Francis says hello and
I gave him your info.

A
BROTHER THING

Francis will be gone
soon. I hate that word, gone. It scares the crap out me. We were all reading at
the kitchen table this morning. This one is bigger than at home. In fact, it’s
the dining room table too. I read weird bird news:
Thousands of blackbirds
fall dead from the sky in Beebe Arkansas…500 more in Louisiana.
Birds have
an internal compass for navigation. Some cells in their beaks or eyes sense the
field like a sixth sense. Maybe the field went haywire? Other theories:
possible fireworks scared them to death; hit by a lightning bolt or hail storm;
alien abduction—aliens shot the blackbird souls out of each bird and left their
shell. My theory: electromagnetic field overloads. Bolts of electricity like
lightening, but caused by satellite waves, penetrated the air, spread out in
one mile radius. First, it drew the blackbirds to it like a magnet, and then
zapped them with its mega force. I’m sure it can be corroborated if I look hard
enough. I haven’t had time. I have lots on my mind like the suspect, Jed Faust.

But then today Ben said
they have someone in custody. He said he thinks it’s a math teacher, Jed Faust.
I felt euphoric when he said that. But still I can’t be sure. I’m also thinking
about Trudy and Neal. I wonder I they are still together. Or, if Trudy got
smart and gave him the boot.

pm

Big
news after chocolate crème pie (I was on my last bite) Lance and Dorrie announced
their engagement. They will be married on 11/11—this year! I’m not surprised. I
took a photo of her hand and Ben’s grandmother’s ring. I’m happy that Benny boy
will be my step-dad, officially. Heather came to visit mid-afternoon, and we
took a walk on the beach after dinner. We built a bonfire. It was perfect. But
with the good comes the bad.  Just before falling asleep, I thought of Emmet
returning in a violent manic rage. Maybe it was the chocolate crème pie, or the
weird bird incident, or the dead crab memory. I dreamt of my father. He came to
the beach. We wouldn’t let him in so he raced around the cottage yelling and
swearing. Even Francis was scared. We cowered in the upstairs closet. I smelled
the cedar in my dream! I wanted to go to the window, to see him. Francis pulled
me back. One time, he didn’t and I saw him. Emmet Bryce, was wild with long
hair, hunched over like a mad man. When he ran his arms were extended outward
in front of him, oddly, as if he were blind and being led by some magnetic
force, like the Blackhawks, lured in by some frenetic frenzy to their death.
The sky got really dark and I saw the waves breaking closer, inches from my
father. I saw him kneel down as if he were giving up. Then he looked up at me.
And it was me, my face. I woke up yelling Francis’s name. I felt strange after.
Not so much scared but sadder as if I lost something irretrievable. Francis
took me downstairs and we made chocolate milk and ham sandwiches. We watched
Family
Guy
. I told him I missed Leya. He said he did too. I felt 300 times better.
We both fell asleep on the couch. I loved how we woke up together—like the old
days. His arm was draped over me. I never felt so safe in my life.

Lance

COMMENTS

Jabberwocky9
Do
you know that bad dreams are residual subconscious thoughts that we want to
suppress. No suppressing. It all comes out, eventually.

@jabberwock9
yes, I had heard about dreams being suppressed thoughts. I guess the idea of my
father is scary. When I meet him and talk to him, I will feel better (soon I
hope).

Heather
I
had so much fun yesterday with you and your brother. I heard you last night and
wanted to help but I didn’t think it would be polite. xo

@
heather Ah! Thanks…it was a brother thing.

LOVE
AND THE MAGNETIC DRAW

Leya
Blackwater is gone. I know that. I can say it now. The notion of loss has been
weathered. But when someone leaves me, the wound opens. Heather left. And now
Francis is gone. He left two days ago. It was such a void. It’s always harder
for the ones left behind. I wanted to go home, too. But Ben and Dorrie were so
giddy. They were like two couples in a movie, dancing and making out on the
jetty, wading in the water, everywhere. I could have taken a video and posted
it on YouTube. I would call
Love at White Sands Beach.
I could set it to
some pop or rap music and even do a remix on it. I would get millions of views.
It would go viral. Then, I could sell tee-shirts and mugs and get invited on
Oprah
or
Ellen.
I’d never have to return to school again. Love is one big
major magnetic draw. It has this common allure, a mysterious force that draws
people together, makes them seek each other out. I was drawn to three people
like that: Dorrie, Francis and Leya. I thought Trudy too but that was more like
a spell or an addiction. I know the other feeling. It’s when the attraction is
strong, and the person is absent, it gives you an incomplete sort of feeling,
as if you are being pulled in an indistinct way sort of like a kite that is
almost airborne but keeps crashing. I feel Leya, but I know now that she is not
in the physical world. I just get a whoosh of her now and again. And now
Heather is here, and she is real and helping me in ways I never imagined.

Lance

COMMENTS

Jabberwock9
I
love your kite analogy Lance. I love your blog (if I haven’t told you yet). You
have an incredible way with words. I know that feeling so well. When someone
you love moves in and out of your life it is so inconsistent!

Heather
sweetie.
xoxo

HOT
AUGUST AND EMILY DICKINSON

I am home. I have
eleven more days left of summer. Freshman year seems like a life time ago. I
will be a sophomore. It has been hot, really hot for the past three weeks. The
heat waves are intense. Jed Faust was arrested and his trial is in a few weeks.
I saw Neal a couple of times, and he looked at me and said, hey, both times. He
seems more, what’s the word… humble. But I’ve been tricked before. Still, I
know now he is not a murderer. There is hope for him. His truck is always
parked in Trudy’s driveway which means they are living there. They even started
a garden on the side of the yard. I see Trudy kneeling down, a bandana on her
head, digging or watering. But she still walks up and down the street smoking
her brown cherry cigarettes. I caught her once when I was rolling out the
garbage pails. She said
“
Hey, Lance Bryce! How goes it dude
?”
And
I chuckled and snapped the lids on tight. She just stood there blowing out
smoke waiting for something. I don’t know what. So I asked her if she had a
garden. She told yes and that she had some tomatoes. “Got lots of them,” she
said.

“Sounds great,” I told
her. Hey, I’m glad things worked out the way they did.”

And she said “Dandy. Come over some time, Lance! I
miss our chats on the porch! I always liked you Sir Lancelot. I mean it. You’re
cool! Plus, I got so many damn tomatoes. They’ll rot if you don’t take them.”

“I liked you too, Trudy Markus” I said. I didn’t
tell her I didn’t want her tomatoes or that I probably wouldn’t be hanging out
at her house any time soon.

“Well,
don’t be shy. Come over soon. I don’t bite, okay?” and she walked away, holding
her hand up the way she does, in a goodbye gesture.

“
Okay,” I said and
watched her walk away. I wanted to chase after her and ask her if she drugged
me. But how would I say it? “I was just wondering, did you put drugs in my wine
and take advantage of me?” No, too weird.

On a lighter note,
Dorrie said we can go visit Emmet soon. She spoke to his doctor and he said
Emmet has been settling into a new routine and living arrangement and would
like a few more weeks. I wonder if Emmet said that, or if the doctor just
assumed he needed more time. The mentally ill don’t have much of a voice. But,
I can feel his waves lately. I know he is trying to reach me, somehow. But as I
was saying, it’s been an unusually hot August and I have this one memory a few
weeks before my first year at Charles Pond High School and Leya’s last year, a
couple months before she was murdered.  I remember it like it was yesterday and
have been thinking about it all the time lately. It replays in my head like a
movie clip. It may just be my last summer memory of Leya. The last one that I
put down in words:

It’s close to 100
degrees. We are sitting on the side of my yard. The grass is brown. The flower
garden is wilted and dried. It’s so hot you can see the heat rise off the
driveway like waves. When the wind blows the air is hot like a blow dryer. We
are sitting in wrought iron chairs painted light pink. The umbrella casts a
shadow but still doesn’t shield the heat. Leya is wearing a halter top that
ties around her neck. It is light green cotton and has tiny flowers. Her arms
are long and thin and light tan. She wears a Scarab bracelet she got on her
tenth birthday from her grandmother, and a wood beaded necklace with a Yin Yang
pendant.
It’s inspired by the sea and handcrafted by Indians
, she told
Neal after he made fun of it. She has a sanguine glow from the heat. We are
eating jelly beans and sliced melon off a crystal plate and we have tall
glasses filled with lemonade and a lemon wedge on the sides of our glasses. We
are giddy from the heat. She leans back in her chair; her barefoot rests up
against the table. Her toe nails are painted pink like the table and the front
of your feet are tan, the bottoms are black. The best part is that she is reciting
Emily Dickinson’s poem using a British accent:
Because I could not stop for
death he kindly stopped for me
… I watch her arms extend. I love how she is
so animated as if she is swallowing the world:
The carriage held but just
ourselves…And immortality
.

“Passing into death?” I ask.

But you ignore me and continue:
We slowly drove,
he knew no haste, And I had put away…My labor, and my leisure too…for his
civility
.

“
Who is he? Is it
death?” I think it is but I’m not 100 percent sure and I want to know so I keep
asking and it makes her laugh.

We passed the school, where children
strove…At recess, in the ring…We passed the fields of gazing grain…We passed
the setting sun.

I don’t care anymore what it means. I sit back and
listen. Leya’s voice freezes me to the spot.

We paused before a house that seemed…A
swelling of the ground…The roof was scarcely visible…The cornice but a mound.
She stands and moves her arms in front of her as if conducting a symphony: Then
out of nowhere she run towards the sprinkler. I think she will jump through it,
but instead she bends down. Before I know it, she is coming towards me with the
hose. Her energy is wild, untamed, manic and I like it. The stream hits me. It
feels like razors. I have never liked the surprise of water. The few times
someone tried to throw me in a pool or the ocean or spray me with a hose, I
would freak. Now, Leya sprays me, and the water is cold and my skin tingles and
I like it. I run at her to take the hose away. She tries to run and slips on
the wet grass. I have her in my arms. I pry her hands off the nozzle. We are
both laughing. I smell her wet hair. It touches my mouth. I want to suck it. My
body is against hers and I feel a sensation that is jarring. When I do get the
nozzle, she is back up and running. I hold down the handle and the stream
shoots outward. It gets her in the center of the back. She arches and screams. I
feel a strange sense of power as I do it
. Stop! Lance, Stop!
she shouts.
I drop the hose. We walk back to the table, breathless, dripping, take a sip of
our lemonade and she toasts
: to my two dear friends, Emily Dickinson and Lance
Bryce.

Just as our glasses
touch and chime, I hear Neal. The sound of his Harley reverberates against the
air like a wall of demons screaming. He rides right up to the table, the tires
spewing grass and mud. He turns the key and the engine winds down. “You look
like a wet rat
,”
he tells her.

Well, now, that’s not
very nice
, she says, spinning, jovial, still giddy from the
hose and the heat.

Then he stares at me and I think he wants to hit me.
Instead, he gestures to Leya to get on his bike. For the first time, I notice
her indifference as she takes the lemon wedge and sucks on it, purses her lips,
recites the last verse of the poem:
Since then 'tis centuries and yet
each…feels shorter than the day… I first surmised the horses' heads…Were toward
eternity.
It’s as if Emily Dickinson empowers her.

Neal looks on confused, angrier than ever: “What the
hell is your deal? Did pretty boy here spike your lemonade?”